A New Reason to Soldier On

I know I’m a little behind on this post, but this is what is going on with feminists in my community:

So I’m a volunteer at Planned Parenthood. Yeah, I said it. I’m not ashamed of helping women with family planning and living healthy lives. Having said that, a few weeks ago myself and a few friends attended a party at Planned Parenthood to counteract the launching of 40 Day of Harassment, or what they called 40 Days for Life. We had been trained a few days ago by a woman named Abby Johnson. She was hilarious, witty, and really knew what she was talking about when it came to protecting patients of PP from the 40 Days peeps. We all loved her.

I found out through an email in early October that Abby, the director of PP for 2 years, no longer workedthere. After some calls and snooping, I found out that she quit. Sad. I liked her. We were even facebook friends.

A couple of weeks later, as I am driving home from the airport in Houston, I received the news that a news channel in BCS printed an article saying that Abby was now a member of the Coalition for Life- those that put on 40 Days of Harassment. Impossible.

Once this was confirmed to be true, I felt really uneasy about it. To tell you the truth, I still feel really weird about it. Abby worked with PP for 8 years and then one day decides that not only is she now anti-choice, she joins the radical, crazy people she once tried to shield people from. What. The. Hell. I don’t care if Abby is pro-life- that is her decision. I take issue with the fact that she became a member of the Coalition for Life and made very public her “spiritual conversion.” This whole fiasco has been a very hard slap in the face. When I watch the video interviews I feel like it isn’t even Abby that I’m watching.

The pro-choice movement lost a great ally, and I lost someone I thought I could trust. She even deleted me and pretty much everyone else who is pro-choice off her facebook friends. Like my friend Shelly said, it has been really hard to be here right now, and it just feels so painful as both a local PP supporter and volunteer, and an activist.

The only good that comes from this is a new reason to soldier on. Abby’s very public coming out is only a reminder of how important the work that my friends do.

To all of my friends out there, keep fighting the good fight. While this is both discouraging and upsetting, there are still women’s lives on the line and I refuse to let anti-choicers and their politics get me down.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 2:39 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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